56 The Ottawa Naturalist. [June 



so-called reason, analogy and common sense may seem to dic- 

 tate, the facts will not follow in the path marked out for them ; 

 and the atmospheric tides refuse to ebb and flow, except in a 

 most infinitesimal degree, quite disproportioned to their sup- 

 posed moving forces. 



Fallacies about the moon are numerous, such as that the 

 full moon clears away the clouds ; that you should only sow 

 beans or cut down trees in the wane of the moon ; kill hogs and 

 beef when the moon is waxing ; set fence posts when she is 

 waning so as to draw down and not heave ; that to see the old 

 moon in the arms of the new brings on rain, as also the halo 

 rain or snow, and so forth. 



About the sun also there are many fallacies, and ever since 

 the discovery that the spots which appear on his surface have a 

 period of greatest and least frequency, there have been theorists 

 in shoals who have sought to prove that this fact rules the 

 weather. It has undoubtedly been found that the frequency o 

 sun spots and the variations of the magnetic needle are inti- 

 mately connected ; and it is almost equally well established that 

 the aurora appears in some sort of sympathy with the sun spot 

 variations. But this, up to the present, is as far as we can get 

 in this direction, for our weather seems to have no definite rela- 

 tion to these changes. 



It has often been stated that the noise of cannon will pro- 

 duce rain, and that great battles in consequence of the introduc- 

 tion of gunpowder have been followed by rain, but this opinion 

 is not proved by facts. 



So firmly and widely rooted is the belief in the practicability 

 of weather forecasting, that separate bureaus for this purpose 

 have been formed and aie maintained at public expense in Great 

 Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, 

 Algeria, Australia, India and Japan. Other nations, such as 

 Sweden, Holland and Switzerland, co-operate with and share 

 the expenses and benefits of other larger countries 



